New Data on the Laws Governing the Development of Capitalism in Agriculture

PART ONE—Capitalism and Agriculture in the United States of America

10. Defects of Conventional Methods of Economic Analysis.
      Marx on the Peculiarities Of Agriculture

Thegrouping of farms by acreage, total or improved, is the only
      kind of grouping which was used in the American Census reports
      for 1910, and which is used in the great majority of European
      countries. Generally speaking, it is indisputable that apart
      from fiscal, bureaucratic and administrative reasons there are
      scientific considerations arguing the need and correctness of
      this kind of grouping. Still it is obviously inadequate for it
      completely fails to take account of the intensification of
      agriculture, the increasing expenditure of capital per unit of
      area in the form of livestock, machinery, improved seeds, better
      methods of crop cultivation, etc. Meanwhile, with the exception
      of a very few areas and countries with a primitive or purely
      extensive agriculture, it is this very process that is most
      typical for capitalist countries everywhere. For this reason the
      grouping of farms by acreage in the vast majority of cases gives
      an oversimplified and entirely inadequate picture of
      agricultural development in general, and of capitalist
      development in agriculture in particular.

Whenthe verbose economists and statisticians who express the
      most popular bourgeois views hold forth on the dissimilarity of
      conditions in agriculture and industry, the specific nature of
      the former, and so on and so forth, one is always tempted to
      say: Gentlemen! You yourselves are most to blame for maintaining
      and spreading oversimplified and crude notions of evolution in
      agriculture! Remember Marx’sCapital. In it you will
      find references to the extreme variety of forms of land
      ownership, such as feudal, clan, communal (and
      primitive-squatter), state, etc., which capitalism encounters
      when it makes its appearance on the historical scene. Capital
      subordinates to itself all these varied forms of land ownership
      and remolds them after its own fashion, and if one is to
      understand, evaluate and express this process in statistical
      terms, one must learn to modify the formulation of the question
      and the methods of investigation in accordance with the changingformof the process. Capitalism subordinates to itself
      all these forms of land ownership: communal-allotment holdings
      in Russia; squatter tracts or holdings regulated by free
      distribution in a democratic or a feudal state, as in Siberia or
      the American Far West; the slave-holding estates in the American
      South, and the semi-feudal landholdings of the “purely Russian”
      gubernias. In all these cases, the development and victory of
      capitalism is similar, though not identical in form. In order to
      study and understand the precise nature of the process one must
      go beyond the trite petty-bourgeois phrases about “family
      farming” or the routine methods of comparing acreage alone.

Youwill also find that Marx analyses the origin of the
      capitalist type of ground-rent and its relationship to its
      forerunners in history, such as rent in kind, labour service
      (corvée and its survivals); money-rent (quit-rent,
      etc.). But who among the bourgeois or petty-bourgeois, Narodnik,
      economists or statisticians has given any serious thought to
      applying these theoretical guiding principles of Marx’s to an
      investigation of the rise of capitalismfromthe
      slave-holding economy of the American South, orfromthe corvée economy in central Russia?

Finally,you will find throughout Marx’s analysis of ground-rent
      systematic references to the varied conditions ofagriculture
      engendered not only by the differences in quality and location
      of the land, but also by the differences inthe amount of
      capital invested in it. Now what does application of
      capital to land imply? It implies technical changes in
      agriculture, its intensification, the transition to higher
      systems of field cropping, increased use of artificial
      fertilizers, the wider use and improvement of implements and
      machinery, greater employment of hired labour, etc. A record of
      the acreage alone will not express all these complex and varied
      processes, which all combine to make up the general process of
      the development of capitalism in agriculture.

RussianZemstvostatisticians,[3]especially those of the “good old”
      pre-Revolutionary days, won universal respect because they
      avoided the routine approach and took a certain scientific
      interest in their business, going beyond its purely fiscal,
      bureaucratic and administrative aspects. They were probably the
      first statisticians to notice the inadequacy of grouping farms
      by acreage alone, and, accordingly, introduced other methods of
      classification, such as by sown area, number of draught animals,
      employment of hired labour, etc. Unfortunately, the sporadic and
      scattered operations of our Zemstvo statistics—in the past
      ever what you might call an oasis in the desert of feudal
      obscurity, bureaucratic routine, and every kind of stupid
      red-tapism—have not yielded any long-term results either
      for Russian or European economics.

Itshould be noted that the grouping of the returns canvassed in
      modern agricultural censuses is not such a purely technical or
      highly specialized question as may appear at first sight. The
      returns contain an immense wealth of complete information on
      each enterprise as a unit, but due to the clumsy, thoughtless,
      routine approach to tabulation and grouping, this extremely
      valuable material is all lost, wasted, and discolored, which
      often makes it practically useless for any study of the laws of
      agricultural evolution. The returns make it possible to say
      quite categorically whether a farm is a capitalist enterprise,
      and to what extent; whether its farming operations are
      intensive, and to what degree, etc.; but when data relating to
      millions of farms are tabulated the most essential distinctions,
      features and characteristics—which ought to be mosteffectivelybrought out, determined and taken
      into account—tend to disappear, so that all the economist
      gets, instead of a sensible statistical review, is routine,
      meaningless columns of figures, a kind of statistical “game of
      digits”.

TheAmerican Census of 1910 with which we are now concerned is
      an excellent example of how first-class material of surpassing
      wealth and completeness has been devalued and spoiled by the
      routine approach and scientific ignorance of the
      statisticians. The processing is very much worse than in the
      1900 Census, and even the traditional grouping of farms by
      acreage has not been fully carried out, so that we have no
      possibility of making a comparison between the enterprises in
      the various groups, say, as regards their employment of hired
      labour, the difference in their systems of field cropping, the
      use of fertilizers, etc.

Iam compelled, therefore, to turn to the 1900 Census. It gave,
      to my knowledge, the world’s only example of the use ofthreedifferent methods, instead of one, to group or
      “classify” (as the Americans say) the great abundance of
      material on more than five and a half million farms, collected
      in a single country, at a single time, and under a single
      program.

Itis true that here, too, no classification gives all the
      essential characteristics of the type and size of farm. Still
      the resultant picture of capitalist agriculture and the
      capitalist evolution of agriculture is, as I hope to show, very
      much fuller, and reflects the real situation much more correctly
      than can ever be the case when the conventional, one-sided and
      inadequate single method of classification is used. Given the
      opportunity for a fuller study of facts and trends, which may be
      safely considered common to all the capitalist countries of the
      world, the most serious errors and dogmas of bourgeois and
      petty-bourgeois, Narodnik political economy are shown up and
      exposed.

Sincethe data in question are so important I shall have to
      examine them in greater detail and employ statistical tables
      more frequently than hitherto. Realizing fully that statistical
      tables burden the text and make reading more difficult, I have
      tried to keep them down to a minimum, and hope the reader will
      be lenient with me if I now have to increase that minimum, for
      on the analysis of the pointsexamined here depends not only the
      general conclusion on the principal question—the trend,
      type, character and law of evolution of modern
      agriculture—but also the general assessment of the data
      furnished by modern agricultural statistics which are so often
      cited and just as often distorted.

Thefirst grouping—“by acreage”—gives the following
      picture of American agriculture in 1900:

Itis safe to say that the statistics of any capitalist
      country—the inessential particulars apart—would
      present an absolutely similar picture. This is confirmed by the
      latest censuses in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Switzerland and
      Denmark. As total farm acreage increases from group to group,
      there is also an increase in the average improved acreage, the
      average value of the produce, the value of implements and
      machinery, the value of livestock (I have omitted these figures)
      and the expenditure on hired labour (earlier on I pointed out
      the significance of the slight exception of the under-3-acre
      farms and in part of the 3-to-10-acre farms).

Itwould seem that it could not be otherwise. The increase in
      expenditure on hired labour appears to confirm beyond any doubt
      that the division of farms into large and small onthe strength
      of acreage is entirely in accord with their division into
      capitalist and non-capitalist enterprises. Nine-tenths of the
      usual arguments about “small-scale” agriculture are based on
      identification in this way and on such data.

Letus now consider the average per acre of (all) land, instead of per farm:

Allowingfor some absolutely negligible exceptions we find a
      uniform decline in the characteristics of intensive farming from
      the lower groups to the higher.

Theconclusion appears to be incontrovertible that “small-scale”
      production in agriculture is more intensive than large-scale
      production, that the smaller the “scale” of production, the
      greater the intensity and productivity of agriculture, and that,
      “consequently”, capitalist production in agriculture is
      maintained only by the extensive, primitive nature of the
      economy, etc.

Infact, the same conclusions are being drawn all the time, on
      every hand, in all bourgeois and petty-bourgeois
      (opportunist-“Marxist” and Narodnik) writings, for when farms
      are grouped by acreage (which is not only the most common but
      practically the only kind of grouping done) the picture will be
      similar for any capitalist country, that is, it will show the
      same decline in the characteristics of intensive agriculture
      from the lower groups to the higher. There is, for instance, the
      celebrated work of the celebrated Eduard
      David—Socialism and Agriculture—a collection
      of bourgeois prejudices and bourgeois lies under the coverof
      quasi-socialist catchwords. It uses just that kind of data to
      prove the “superiority”, “viability”, etc., of “small-scale”
      production.

Onefactor has especially facilitated such conclusions. It is
      that data similar to the above are ordinarily available on the
      quantity of livestock; but practically nowhere are data
      collected on hired labour—especially in such a summarized
      form as expenditure on hired labour. But it is precisely the
      data on hired labour that reveal the incorrectness of all such
      conclusions. In effect, if the increase, say, in the value of
      livestock (or the total number of animals, which is the same
      thing) per unit of area down the scale is taken as evidence of
      the “superiority” of “small-scale” agriculture, it should be
      borne in mind that as we go down the scale this “superiority”
      turns out to beconnectedwithincreasingexpenditure on hired labour! But such an increase in the
      expenditure on hired labour—notice that we have all along
      been dealing with values per unit of area, per acre, per
      hectare, per dessiatine—signifies a growth of thecapitalistnature of the enterprise! But the capitalist
      nature of the enterprise clashes with the popular notion of
      “small-scale” production because small-scale production implies
      enterprise which isnotbased on hired labour.

Thisseems to create a knot of contradictions. The overall
      acreage returns for the size groups indicate that the “small”
      farms are non-capitalist, whereas the big farms are. Yet the
      very same data show that the “smaller” the enterprise, the more
      intensive it is, and the larger its expenditure on hired labour
      per unit of land area!

Inorder to explain this let us consider another type of
      grouping.

[1]Excludingproduce used as feed.
—Lenin

[2]Lessthan 0.1%.
—Lenin

[3][PLACEHOLDER.]